Monday, October 01, 2007

Professor Magnet Hotel

Later this fall I will be traveling to a large city to which I’ve traveled a number of times in the past ~ 20 years. A long time ago, I found a hotel that I really like, so I typically stay there. I have never bothered to read reviews of this hotel before, perhaps because I started staying there in the pre-online review era and already know that I like this hotel. Out of curiosity, I looked it up online recently and found to my surprise that this hotel is “favored by academics”.

I find it disconcerting that being a professor so pervades every molecule of my being that I am subconsciously attracted to a particular kind of hotel. When I’ve stayed at this hotel before, I have not noticed that it is swarming with professorial people. Next time, I will look around and see if there are people in shirts that look like graph paper or people dressed all in black editing manuscripts in the breakfast room.

I’m not sure what specifically makes this hotel a professor magnet. The hotel is architecturally interesting (= charming), smallish (= cozy), and conveniently located in the city center. So..?

In all seriousness and speaking as a UK postdoc, academic allowances for conference travel are pretty derisory where I work.

When traveling for pleasure, my partner (another academic) and I look for places that don't have a load of organised activities. Places where you can be left in peace because the staff and fellow guests just get the fact that, for some people at least, reading is the first and favoured pleasure. Places where they spend more time an perfecting the food menus than they do on inventing new double entendres for the cocktail menus. And places that are cheap- because let's face it, a postdoc's salary is not that great either.

I suspect you've been attracted to the same characteristics as other members of your tribe.

There's an intriguing series of portraits by a dutch (I think) photographer who took hundreds of pictures of people in different groups (grunge, gypsies, skinheads, . . . . The remarkable characteristic of how similar the individual members of the group look. Everyone expects conformity from the corporate lawyer, but it was true for every group (through this photographer's lens).

But, you really have to go further than just look at people at the hotel out of the corner of your eye. You have to take out the piece of graph paper (or wear a graph paper shirt) and make a little bar graph of people's professions at the hotel. Then, you can go back to the website and post the actual distribution.

The concierge probably asks people why they are staying at the hotel and somewhere they keep a basic log of it, and that's been noted. A lot of business and single travelers will be drawn to such a hotel because it's a lot more appealing to those people than 'this hotel is frequented by exhausted parents who flew 12 hours through 3 different cities with 4 kinds under the age of 10, who are never going to be tired ever again'. Academics say 'we're quiet, peaceful, reasonable, and reliable'.

Well, I can tell you that's the complete opposite of what I'm looking for in a hotel. I like big hotel chains, preferably four-star or above, with nice cocktail bars, mints on my pillow, and at least two restaurants. Lack of marble floors and dirty wall-to-wall carpets will be noted with disapproval, as will lack of polite concierge and large, yet stylish chandeliers in the lobby. At least one of the restaurants should have a nice nighttime view and a head chef who knows how to keep his staff in line. Basically, I like hotels in which people in shorts and t-shirts look weird.

Perhaps whatever it is that drives you toward academia and me toward business also influences our hotel preferences? I lived in an apartment compound associated with a four-star hotel as a child, and I imagine that shaped my idea of what a hotel is like a fair bit. I still feel like I've come home at a Hilton or a Marriott. My desire to be a businesswoman comes a lot from the fact that that is the world that I grew up in as a TCK. I'm not expecting you to share your childhood social circumstances, but perhaps this could be food for thought.

I am forced to post by the sheer growing density of references to the graph paper shirt. I just went shopping with my (physical scientist) partner. We went to Brooks Brothers. He bought a ... drumroll please ... graph paper shirt!

I've been thinking of this post since last night - I'm at AVS 54 in Seattle and had the worst hotel experience of my life. I tried the Westin, who referred me to something called the Sixth Avenue Inn - the dirtiest, nastiest hotel I've set foot in in my entire life. I got to my room at 1:30 AM (not a fan of AA either at the moment) and had the urge to run right back out. I didn't want to step on the carpet with bare feet. There was someone else's hair in my bed (long, dark and curly - mine is short, straight and blonde) and in my bathroom (possibly hair from second person, because it was short, darker and straight), there were marks on the walls, there was no climate control, just a big clunky heater under the window, thread-bare blanket - no comforter, ugly laminated chipped furniture and ugly PVC-covered chairs with stuffing peeking out of a hole. This may sound silly, but I felt awful - displaced and abandoned at 1:30 AM after 12h of traveling, like I was cut off from the world. Today, I ran into a groupmate who is staying at the same hotel - and who thought it was fine. He even smiled when he said he didn't care!

THIS isn't what you're talking about, is it? I know it can't be the same hotel, but more generally speaking - the hotel self-described itself using words that you use to desribe the hotel in this post. I'm still in shock. I'm staying at a hotel that's double the rate now and feel much better. I seriously couldn't have done much work staying at that first place - I'd have been too busy being uncomfortable to give my presentation well or to be social.

I guess for me, the five-star hotels serve as an instant point of familiarity that allows me to get down to business anywhere in the world. Now that I think about it, there's even a Saskia Sassen article arguing that the need for such familiar deterritorialized infrastructure in driving change in cosmopolitan business centers. Not staying in one makes me feel cut off from the global network without which I can do nothing and don't really even exist. I realize that's more due to me being a TCK than non-academic at heart, but I can't help but wonder - academics DO object to hairs in hotel beds and bathrooms, right? Right?

If anyone reading this blog is at the AVS we should have martinis and talk at the bar of my hotel - it's won prizes for best classic martini. Reply to my blog and I'll be emailed.

About Me

I am a full professor in a physical sciences field at a large research university. I am married and have a teenaged daughter.
I have the greatest job in the world, but this will not stop me from noting some of the more puzzling and stressful aspects of my career as a science professor.
E-mail (can't promise to reply): femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com